Believe and Live

I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life

14 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

In response to Thomas’ question, Jesus utters one of His best known and most beautiful sayings, the sixth of His seven “I am” sayings (see 6:35): “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus tells Thomas that He Himself, in His own person, is the way. This is very similar to Christ’s saying in 10:9 that He is the “door” by whom men enter and are saved. Here, He is the way (Greek hodos, road, highway, path) by which men must journey if they wish to arrive at that place where He is going.

The way to Heaven is not a plan, a principle, or a force, but a person. Men get to Heaven by means of a personal knowledge of and relationship with this person.

Not only is Jesus the way; He is the only way.

“Once saved, always saved but also, once saved, forever following.” ― J.D. Greear

No man can come to God by any other. Only through Him may men approach God. All other ways of approaching God are useless. Only through Christ do men have the fellowship with the God of Heaven which they so desperately desire (Ps. 42:1).

Not only is Jesus the way, He is also the truth.

Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. - Warren Wiersbe

He is the truth in that He is the “Word” (1:1 etc.), that which communicates the essential nature of God’s being. What Jesus says is true, and He is truly what He claims to be. But He means more than that: He is the embodiment of truth. Truth inheres in Him. The very essence of reality derives from Him. To simply say, then, that Jesus is truthful and that what He says is accurate, though it is certainly correct, understates the case. Surely men can believe Him who is the very ground and essence of truth, truth personified.

Not only is Jesus the way and the truth, Jesus is the life.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. – C.S. Lewis

This is not a new concept. There have been many references in this Gospel to Jesus as the One who can grant eternal life (1:4; 4:10, 14; 6:51; 10:10; 11:25, which see for comments). Here Jesus draws upon all that has been said previously to emphasize to the disciples what Peter has already expressed (6:68), that Jesus is the only means by which they may attain eternal life.

Why Are You Cast Down, O My Soul?

Psalm 42 

1  As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. 2  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3  My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” 4  These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. 5  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation 6 and my God.